Recommended by Michael Woolcock.The Tyrannicide Brief, by Geoffrey Robertson. Michael writes: “This is an unbelievable account of the first person to ever try a head of state for tyranny (Charles I, in England, in 1649): John Cooke knew full well that he would eventually be publically tortured and executed for his efforts, but went ahead anyway, won the case, effectively ended the notion of the ‘divine right of kings’, replaced ‘rule by law’ with ‘rule of law’, and put in motion what became, centuries later, the International Criminal Court (so that the world’s seriously bad guys — Pinochet, Milosevic — are eventually called to account). It makes whatever we do seem unbelievably tame, safe and trivial by comparison. But Cooke was just an ordinary guy of relatively humble origins who stood up when his peers looked the other way, and used his professional training to the full to do what was right. Should be a movie.. “